A few weeks later, a letter from Ann.
Darling Lee,
The longer I am away from you the greater the feeling of enormity oppresses me at what I have done. Yet I hope and pray that once the terrible feeling of the first break has passed you will be finding life comfortable and easy without me. I have now reached Auckland and Althea has met me, and we are staying a night at this hotel in Queen Street before embarking on the last stage of my journey tomorrow. The weather is lovely, the people are lovely and everyone most welcoming.
The trip has been tiring, constantly bumpy, and we had to spend an extra day on Fiji because an engine was malfunctioning. So we arrived a day late, but with the constant time changes I honestly cannot tell whether it is Wednesday or Thursday! There’s a lovely bridge across the harbour here, just opened, which is as handsome as Sydney’s. It is a fine city, with sea on almost all sides, and I bought some postcards of it, but then it seemed too trivial to send them.
We leave for Kerikeri on the Bay of Islands tomorrow, and I am eagerly anticipating what I shall find there. Forgive me for my eagerness, which was certainly not motivated by any eagerness to leave you. But it is a strange and wonderfully exciting world! We shall be at the extreme northernmost tip of New Zealand, with 700 miles of water between us and the next substantial piece of land, which is New Caledonia. (Or maybe only 500 to Sydney. I will learn more in due course.)
Dearest love,
Ann
Their next-door neighbours, if you could call them that, were the Carters, who lived on flatter ground about a hundred yards up the road. Bel Carter, who did not play bridge, took to walking over on a Sunday evening to see him and take a coffee or a highball. She seemed concerned for his future and obviously wished to share his thoughts more personally than he wished to share them with her. Bel Canto, as Ann always called her because she had a fair voice and aired it frequently at local concerts, was fortyish, a tall, dark woman with the dignity which came of the long possession of private money. Her dignity did not prevent her from having an eye for an eligible man, but Lee hoped her interest in him was only that of a friendly neighbour. Her husband, who was as old as Lee, was attached to Boston University and wrote books on maritime history. Bel was very relieved, she said, that Lee had no immediate intention of altering his lifestyle. The usual questions about Ann and the prospects of her possible return had already been exhaustively discussed.
Bel said: ‘Is that Mrs Heinz in your employment still?’
‘She never was – except for a while in ’56 when Ann was convalescing. Why?’
‘I’ve seen her about the house once or twice.’
‘When?’
‘Oh, last week. Thursday, I think it was. And the week before. Pretty woman, isn’t she.’
‘She was Ann’s friend – I hardly know her.’
Later he asked Hannah, who said, ‘Oh yes, sor. She brought the kitchen curtains back. Mrs Burford had asked her to repair them. Then she came back this week to bring a cake she had baked, and just to see how we was managing.’
Weekends were hardest to fill. With the summery weather he was able to play golf most of the two days, only stopping when he was too tired to go on and therefore almost too tired to feel lonely. On wet days he drank rather a lot and played bridge at the Club. In lonely moments he tried to concentrate on his practice, and on a paper he was going to read at Boston University advocating a change in the law which would permit lawyers to practise beyond their own state frontiers.
The two maids took it in turns to cook his evening meal, but then Della fell ill so he started eating out three evenings a week. It wasn’t an unwelcome change, because Della’s Puerto Rican cooking was oily for his taste. One night he went to the Paul Revere on Gray Street and found Letty waiting at the next table. She half smiled at him and he nodded, but after the meal he stopped her when she was disengaged and said: ‘I didn’t know you worked here.’
‘Well, I am sort of temporary while the other girls take their holidays; but I am hoping it will become permanent.’
‘I have heard from Mrs Burford.’
‘Oh, have you? How is she?’
‘Well enough, it seems. She hadn’t then reached wherever she is going, so it was just a letter to say she had arrived in New Zealand.’
‘Oh … Oh, I see.’
There seemed nothing more to add. Then she said: ‘Have you been playing bridge, Mr Burford?’
‘Quite a lot. But not at the house.’
Letty Heinz said: ‘I am glad you are playing – even if not at home.’
He hesitated. ‘Perhaps one ought to begin again.’
She did not reply.
He said: ‘ You offered to come if I was arranging bridge at home.’
‘Of course. I would be very pleased.’
‘What about Wednesday next?’
‘I am sorry, I am on duty here. I could come Thursday.’
‘Make it Thursday then.’
They were about to separate when she said: ‘How are Hannah and Della?’
‘Della is off sick. That is why I am eating out.’
‘I am sorry Della is sick.’
‘Not that I enjoy Della’s cooking very much, so it makes a change.’
‘Can Hannah not come all the time?’
‘I believe not. She has a family of her own—’
‘Mr Burford.’ As he was turning away. ‘ Saturdays I work here and Sundays at the church, but I am free on Thursday. Would you like it if I came early and prepared a meal?’
He turned the ring on his finger. ‘Certainly. It would be a change.’
‘I will try to be there about six thirty.’
‘Make it dinner for four,’ he said. ‘I will ask the Macphersons.’
Her meal on Thursday reminded him of those she had cooked while she was staying at the house during Ann’s convalescence. He had forgotten what a good bridge player she was – they won – and the Macphersons – a fellow lawyer and his wife – seemed to find her acceptable. Sitting watching her play a hand he thought her looks were more Germanic than Scandinavian, and wondered if that had subliminally prejudiced him against her. He always tried to be rational and tolerant about these things, but it was only fifteen years since he had been fighting Hitler and he couldn’t yet quite forget it.
She was attractive tonight, her hair pulled back in a pony tail, a striped blue and white blouse with high white collar and turned-up cuffs, and a navy blue embroidered bolero.
He ought to let bridge take up more of his time, he thought. It was a preoccupation, a relaxation, a way of exercising his brain in a different, entirely unlegal but largely mathematical way. His sense of loss, of angry, hurt bereavement could be kept more at arm’s length by the stimulation and the challenge.
When the evening was over the Macphersons offered Letty a lift home; she said she must stay to clear away but he said no, go, Hannah will do it in the morning. As he shook hands with her he said: ‘ I’ll be in touch with you again. Thank you.’
‘Thank you, Mr Burford.’
That night in bed he looked at the empty bed beside his and thought of his wife. To begin to do so at this stage of an evening was a sure recipe for insomnia for he could not stop dwelling on the happy times they had had together. To counteract it tonight he tried to think of the bridge hands he had just held and played – and won. It had been perhaps the most acceptable evening he had spent since Ann left. He wondered if he had misjudged Letty Heinz.
VI
Usually he had his first round of golf on Sunday mornings with three medics: they started very early before most people had finished their pancakes and cereals. But one Sunday one doctor was on holiday and another couldn’t make it, so Lee played alone with his own doctor, James Amis.
It was a pleasant day and Lee played well. He ventured a joke. He had a dry sense of humour and a fair sense of fun, but he had not been in a joking mood for the last few weeks.
James Amis cocked a professional eyebrow at
him. ‘You’re looking better today, Lee. Are things beginning to sort themselves out a bit?’
‘No,’ said Lee emphatically. ‘But I guess it’s six weeks after the operation.’
‘That’s another way of putting it. I’m sure Ann will want you to go on enjoying life without her. And she may yet choose to return, although—’
‘I suppose,’ Lee said. ‘Apart from the loss of my partner, who has been, who was such a good partner for so long – apart from that it has, all this has been a blow to my pride – ego if you like. I think of what I must in some way have desperately lacked that a woman should suddenly, after all those years, should suddenly decide she couldn’t live with me any longer, so she upsticks and goes small-boat-sailing on the other side of the world!’
‘I don’t think it was quite like that.’
‘You tell me what it has been like, then!’
They played another hole. James Amis felt it would be better for their golf if he allowed the subject to lapse there. And yet, perhaps it was his duty …
‘Lee.’
‘Yes?’
‘I was going to add that she may come back but that I don’t think she will.’
‘I’m not sure that I would want her now.’
‘Oh, come. It’s a pity if there is this – this feeling of rancour. I wish I could mend it. Perhaps I ought to try.’
‘Did you know anything about this beforehand? Did you know she was going?’
‘Not at all. I was only aware of her unrest.’
Lee hesitated between a three and a four iron, then put them both back.
‘Unrest with me. Maybe I took her too much for granted.’
‘I don’t think it was that. As she no doubt told you, she wanted, she wants to try another life while there is still time.’
Lee made his stroke. The ball pitched short but it was a good lie.
‘So. She was sick of her life here. The fact that we had been happy together for so long didn’t count a button.’
‘It counted a lot. Believe me, it counted a lot.’ James Amis went in search of his ball, which had landed in the rough. When they eventually finished the hole and had come together again, he said: ‘One thing I should tell you. It may not be vital but it may help to explain … You remember that operation she had for a cyst on the womb?’
‘Of course.’
‘It was cancerous.’
Lee stared. ‘ I’d no idea. My God, I’d no idea. Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘She said I must not. She swore me to absolute secrecy.’
Lee followed the other man along the narrow path that led to the fourteenth tee.
‘And it has recurred?’ He bit his lip. ‘ No, of course, that couldn’t be the case. One doesn’t rush off to New Zealand if …’ He stopped.
‘It hadn’t recurred. It hasn’t recurred. She came into hospital for a check-up for a couple of days in February while you were on that consultation in Denver. She was absolutely clear. A clean bill. It couldn’t have been better. I told her to go home and forget it.’
‘Then why …?’
Amis frowned at the fairway. It was three hundred yards before one got to the bumpy ground before the hole.
‘Her mother died of cancer, you know. And her grandmother.’
‘Ah … I’d forgotten. So there’s a greater risk of its recurrence.’
The doctor took out a two wood. ‘ Marginally … I suppose she looked on life slightly differently after 1957. She was fifty-six then … Of course anybody of fifty-six must be aware of the loss of youth, of the prospect of old age. But most people carry on without doing anything about it. I guess she felt she should do something about it.’
‘By getting away? Escaping?’
Amis drove off. It was a hooked shot and landed again in the rough. Lee followed, and sliced his so that it went into the rough on the other side of the fairway. Lee said again, ‘She felt she was escaping?’
‘Not sure. But in a sense, yes.’
‘But she can’t escape that.’
Amis slid his club back into his bag. ‘Nor can anyone else if their number comes up. But I reckon for age fifty-eight she’s as healthy a woman as I’ve examined in ten years. Believe me. As I told her, there’s no reason whatever to think of anything else. But all the same I guess she feels her life is under a minimal threat. It probably provided the springboard to set things off. So she’s jumped, and good luck to her, however it turns out. I’m only sorry it’s snarled up your life.’
‘It certainly has done that.’
The result of their last shots separated them again for a considerable time. On the green Amis said: ‘I hope you’ll think about rebuilding it.’
‘Rebuilding what?’
‘Your life.’
‘I haven’t even begun to think of that.’
‘Well, you should. You should get things squared away and run before the wind for a bit. See how things go.’
‘I’d be glad, in the circumstances,’ Lee said, ‘if you could avoid nautical terms.’
‘Sorry. But how long before you retire?’
‘Oh … three years, eight years, it’s very much for me to choose – so long as I don’t lose my faculties.’
‘You’re very fit, you know. A bit overweight. But no age really. You might even remarry.’
‘I don’t think that’s on. Anyway, I’m past all that.’
‘It would surprise me if you were. Did it not still go on between you and Ann?’
‘Oh, more or less. Not this last three or four years much. It tailed off. These things do. It made no difference – no apparent difference – to the feelings we had for each other.’
‘Did you and Ann never have a falling out?’
‘I don’t remember one.’
‘I thought not. You were freaks.’
‘Thanks a lot.’
‘It’s not an insult. Everybody said that about you. “ Look at Lee and Ann.” It was almost too good to be true.’
‘Well, it’s proved too good to be true, hasn’t it. Everyone must be congratulating themselves on the downfall.’
‘No, they’re not. Not except a few bitches. Most people I’ve talked to have been genuinely sympathetic. And if Ann doesn’t come back, well, there’ll be plenty of unattached women quite willing to take on a model husband.’
VII
Della’s illness proved to be pregnancy, and in July she left to get married. Letty offered to come a couple of evenings a week to cook his supper; this was on the evenings when she was not at the restaurant. He accepted the offer, but reluctantly, for he was still slightly suspicious of her. He still felt she might have had some hand in Ann’s leaving; but in late July Letty brought up a letter that she had just received from Ann. It contained little that he did not know, but though couched in affectionate terms it said nothing to justify his suspicions.
Quite often now they arranged bridge for one or both of her evenings, and it worked pretty well. For bridge, he had to admit, she had a talent.
He gradually settled into a more comfortable routine: Hannah looked after most things, and Letty was a backup who did not intrude unless invited. When he happened to think about it he reckoned that Letty Heinz too would probably remarry soon. Personable, separated from her husband whom she never saw, her son a drop-out whom she never saw, she was ripe to be snapped up by any spare man that came along. Although, for all he knew, she might already be living with some layabout in her flat in Gray Street.
Anyway, none of it was any concern of his.
He knew the white Episcopalian church she attended. It was on the edge of town and looked as if it had been put up with a child’s building blocks. It was surrounded by small white houses which matched, each with its yard inside a paling fence.
He wondered where she had gotten her looks – from her Norwegian father? His legal brain, which still functioned efficiently, told him that Letty Heinz might have other ideas, might instead just possibly be negotiating herself into
a position of indispensability in his household. She might even have ambitions for something more than merely becoming his housekeeper. He dismissed this as ridiculous. Certainly she never made the slightest move to suggest she had anything else in mind. Whatever else he liked or disliked about her he had to acknowledge that she kept her distance and treated him with respect. There was never a hint of challenge in her look, or a coy glance.
He had to go away to a case in Springfield. It was a difficult, exacting legal battle – one of those in which points of law seemed to become more important than points of justice – and when it was over, and successfully over, he travelled home with two of his partners who had been involved also. They talked and joked a lot, for it had been a famous victory. Sometimes Lee joined in, but mostly it was the other two, discussing the legal niceties; and they discreetly observed that the senior partner was still feeling his loss.
The case had been late ending, and now there was a delay on the line. Presently Sam McDonald said, as they’d been held up so much, how would it be if Lee came and had a meal with him and Maudie, and he could drive home afterwards.
Lee blinked and came out of his preoccupation and said thanks all the same, Sam, but no, there’d be food waiting for him. He did not know, in fact, whether anything would be waiting for him. He was expected home today but earlier. He should have rung but hadn’t. It was one of Letty’s evenings – but a non-bridge one – and he supposed she might wait a bit. Somehow, phoning to say he was delayed was too reminiscent of things past.
Yet just at the moment when Sam spoke he had been thinking of Letty Heinz. This was all pretty stupid. He didn’t know if he even liked the woman, yet here he was day-dreaming about her. He came to the conclusion that he was the victim of a mass psychological conspiracy. The conclusion of his friends was: ‘Look at poor Lee Burford, all on his own, he ought to have somebody living in, ministering properly to his needs.’ No less than three times in the last six weeks he had been invited out and found that at the dinner table he was seated next to some eligible widow or divorcee whom he hardly knew. They were all kind, attentive, well-dressed, mid-fifties or younger. Nice enough. But who wanted them? Not he. He wanted Ann’s companionship, and since he couldn’t have that he would do without. (Sometimes still when he lay in bed at night he fancied he could hear her breathing in the bed next to him.)